Since Friday night the good Cure, in his calm, philosophical way, had brooded much over the talk in the garden upon France, the Revolution, and Napoleon. As a rule, his sermons were commonplace almost to a classical simplicity, but there were times when, moved by some new theme, he talked to the villagers as if they, like himself, were learned and wise. He thought of his old life in France, of two Napoleons that he had seen, and of the time when, at Neuilly, a famous general burst into his father’s house, and, with streaming tears, cried:
“He is dead—he is dead—at St. Helena—Napoleon! Oh, Napoleon!”
A chapter from Isaiah came to the Cure’s mind. He brought out his Bible from the house, and, walking up and down, read aloud certain passages. They kept singing in his ears all day
He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a largecountry: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy gloryshall be the shame of thy lord’s house....And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servantEliakim the son of HilkiahAnd I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thygirdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand....And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be fora glorious throne to his father’s house.And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house,the offspring and the issue....
He looked very benign as he quoted these verses in the pulpit on Sunday morning, with a half smile, as of pleased meditation. He was lost to the people before him, and when he began to speak, it was as in soliloquy. He was talking to a vague audience, into that space where a man’s eyes look when he is searching his own mind, discovering it to himself. The instability of earthly power, the putting down of the great, their exile and chastening, and their restoration in their own persons, or in the persons of their descendants—this was his subject. He brought the application down to their own rude, simple life, then returned with it to a higher plane.
At last, as if the memories of France, “beloved and incomparable,” overcame him, he dwelt upon the bitter glory of the Revolution. Then, with a sudden flush, he spoke of Napoleon. At that name the church became still, and the dullest habitant listened intently. Napoleon was in the air—a curious sequence to the song that was sung on the night of Valmond’s arrival, when a phrase was put in the mouths of the parish, which gave birth to a personal reality. “Vive Napoleon!” had been on every lip this week, and it was an easy step from a phrase to a man.
The Cure spoke with pensive dignity of Napoleon’s past career, his work for France, his too proud ambition, behind which was his great love of country; and how, for chastening, God turned upon him violently and tossed him like a ball into the wide land of exile, from which he came out no more.
“But,” continued the calm voice, “his spirit, stripped of the rubbish of this quarrelsome world, and freed from the spite of foes, comes out from exile and lives in our France to-day—for she is still ours, though we find peace and bread to eat, under another flag. And in these troubled times, when France needs a man, even as a barren woman a child to be the token of her womanhood, it may be that one sprung from the loins of the Great Napoleon may again give life to the principle which some have sought to make into a legend. Even as the deliverer came out of obscure Corsica, so from some outpost of France, where the old watchwords still are called, may rise another Napoleon, whose mission will be civic glory and peace alone, the champion of the spirit of France, defending it against the unjust. He shall be fastened as a nail in a sure place, as a glorious throne to his father’s house.”
He leaned over the pulpit, and, pausing, looked down at his congregation. Then, all at once, he was aware that he had created a profound impression. Just in front of him, his eyes burning with a strange fire, sat Monsieur Valmond. Parpon, beside him, hung over the back of a seat, his long arms stretched out, his hands applauding in a soundless way. Beneath the sword of Louis the Martyr, the great treasure of the parish, presented to this church by Marie Antoinette, sat Monsieur Garon, his thin fingers pressed to his mouth as if to stop a sound. Presently, out of pure spontaneity, there ran through the church like a soft chorus:
“O, say, where goes your love?O gai, vive le roi!He wears a silver sword,Vive Napoleon!”
The thing was unprecedented. Who had started it? Afterwards some said it was Parpon, the now chosen comrade—or servant—of Valmond, who, people said, had given himself up to the stranger, body and soul; but no one could swear to that. Shocked, and taken out of his dream, the Cure raised his hand against the song. “Hush, hush, my children!” he said. “Hush, I command you!”
It was the sight of the upraised hands, more than the Cure’s voice, which stilled the outburst. Those same hands had sprinkled the holy water in the sacrament of baptism, had blessed man and maid at the altar, had quieted the angry arm lifted to strike, had anointed the brow of the dying, and laid a crucifix on breasts which had ceased to harbour breath and care and love, and all things else.
Silence fell. In another moment the Cure finished his sermon, but not till his eyes had again met those of Valmond, and there had passed into his mind a sudden, startling thought.
Unconsciously the Cure had declared himself the patron of all that made Pontiac for ever a notable spot in the eyes of three nations: and if he repented of it, no man ever knew.
During mass and the sermon Valmond had sat very still, once or twice smiling curiously at thought of how, inactive himself, the gate of destiny was being opened up for him. Yet he had not been all inactive. He had paid much attention to his toilet, selecting, with purpose, the white waistcoat, the long, blue-grey coat cut in a fashion anterior to this time by thirty years or more, and particularly to the arrangement of his hair. He resembled Napoleon—not the later Napoleon, but the Bonaparte, lean, shy, laconic, who fought at Marengo; and this had startled the Cure in his pulpit, and the rest of the little coterie.
But Madame Chalice, sitting not far from Elise Malboir, had seen the resemblance in the Cure’s garden on Friday evening; and though she had laughed at it, for, indeed, the matter seemed ludicrous enough at first,—the impression had remained. She was no Catholic, she did not as a rule care for religious services; but there was interest in the air, she was restless, the morning was inviting, she was reverent of all true expression of life and feeling, though a sad mocker in much; and so she had come to the little church.
Following Elise’s intent look, she read with amusement the girl’s budding romance, and was then suddenly arrested by the head of Valmond, now half turned towards her. It had, indeed, a look of the First Napoleon. Was it the hair? Yes, it must be; but the head was not so square, so firm set; and what a world of difference in the grand effect! The one had been distant, splendid, brooding (so she glorified him); the other was an impressionist imitation, with dash, form, poetry, and colour. But where was the great strength? It was lacking. The close association of Parpon and Valmond—that was droll; yet, too, it had a sort of fitness, she knew scarcely why. However, Monsieur was not a fool, in the vulgar sense, for he had made a friend of a little creature who could be a wasp or a humming-bird, as he pleased. Then, too, this stranger had conquered her dear avocat; had won the hearts of the mothers and daughters—her own servants talked of no one else; had captured this pretty Elise Malboir; had caused the young men to imitate his walk and retail his sayings; had won from herself an invitation to visit her; and now had made an unconscious herald and champion of an innocent old Cure, and set a whole congregation singing “Vive Napoleon” after mass.
Napoleon? She threw back her pretty head, laughed softly, and fanned herself. Napoleon? Why, of course there could be no real connection; the man was an impostor, a base impostor, playing upon the credulities of a secluded village. Absurd—and interesting! So interesting, she did not resent the attention given to Valmond, to the exclusion of herself; though to speak truly, her vanity desired not admiration more than is inherent in the race of women.
Yet she was very dainty this morning, good to look at, and refreshing, with everything in flower-like accord; simple in general effect, yet with touches of the dramatic here and there—in the little black patch on the delicate health of her cheek, in the seductive arrangements of her laces. She loved dress, all the vanities, but she had something above it all—an imaginative mind, certain of whose faculties had been sharpened to a fine edge of cleverness and wit. For she was but twenty-three; with the logic of a woman of fifty, without its setness and lack of elasticity. She went straight for the hearts of things, while yet she glittered upon the surface. This was why Valmond interested her—not as a man, a physical personality, but as a mystery to be probed, discovered. Sentiment? Coquetry? Not with him. That for less interesting men, she said to herself. Why should a point or two of dress and manners affect her unpleasantly? She ought to be just, to remember that there was a touch of the fantastic, of the barbaric, in all genius.
Was he a genius? For an instant she almost thought he was, when she saw the people make way for him to pass out of the church, as though he were a great personage, Parpon trotting behind him. He carried himself with true appreciation of the incident, acknowledging more by look than by sign this courtesy.
“Upon my word,” she said, “he has them in his pocket.” Then, unconsciously plagiarising Parpon: “Prince or barber—a toss-up!”
Outside, many had gathered round Medallion. The auctioneer, who liked the unique thing and was not without tact, having the gift of humour, took on himself the office of inquisitor, even as there rose again little snatches of “Vive Napoleon” from the crowd. He approached Valmond, who was moving on towards the Louis Quinze, with appreciation of a time for disappearing.
“We know you, sir,” said Medallion, “as Monsieur Valmond; but there are those who think you would let us address you by a name better known—indeed, the name dear to all Frenchmen. If it be so, will you not let us call you Napoleon” (he took off his hat, and Valmond did the same), “and will you tell us what we may do for you?”
Madame Chalice, a little way off, watched Valmond closely. He stood a moment in a quandary, yet he was not outwardly nervous, and he answered presently, with an air of empressement:
“Monsieur, my friends, I am in the hands of fate. I am dumb. Fate speaks for me. But we shall know each other better; and I trust you, who, as Frenchmen, descended from a better day in France, will not betray me. Let us be patient till Destiny strikes the hour.” Now for the first time to-day Valmond saw Madame Chalice.
She could have done no better thing to serve him than to hold out her hand, and say in her clear tones, which had, too, a fascinating sort of monotony:
“Monsieur, if you are idle Friday afternoon, perhaps you will bestow on me a half-hour at the Manor; and I will try to make half mine no bad one.”
He was keen enough to feel the delicacy of the point through the deftness of the phrase; and what he said and what he did now had no pose, but sheer gratitude. With a few gracious words to Medallion, she bowed and drove away, leaving Valmond in the midst of an admiring crowd.
He was launched on an adventure as whimsical as tragical, if he was an impostor; and if he was not, as pathetic as droll. He was scarcely conscious that Parpon walked beside him, till the dwarf said:
“Hold on, my dauphin, you walk too fast for your poor fool.”
From this hour Valmond was carried on by a wave of fortune. Before vespers on that Sunday night, it was common talk that he was a true son of the Great Napoleon, born at St. Helena.
Why did he come to Pontiac? He wished to be in retirement till his friends, acting for him in France, gave him the signal, and then with a small army of French-Canadians he would land in France. Thousands would gather round his standard, and so marching on to Paris, the Napoleonic faith would be revived, and he would come into his own. It is possible that these stories might have been traced to Parpon, but he had covered up his trail so well that no one followed him.
On that Sunday night, young men and old flocked into Valmond’s chambers at the Louis Quinze, shook hands with him, addressing him as “Your Excellency” or “Your Highness.” He maintained towards them a mysterious yet kindly reserve, singularly effective. They inspected the martial furnishing of the room: the drum, the pair of rifles, the pistols, in the corner, the sabres crossed on the wall, the gold-handled sword that lay upon the table, and the picture of Napoleon on a white horse against the wall. Tobacco and wine were set upon a side table, and every man as he passed out took a glass of wine and enough tobacco for his pipe, and said: “Of grace, your health, monseigneur!”
There were those who scoffed, who from natural habit disbelieved, and nodded knowingly, and whispered in each other’s ears; but these were in the minority; and all the women and children declared for this new “Man of Destiny.” And when some foolish body asked him for a lock of his hair, and old Madame Degardy (crazy Joan, as she was called) followed, offering him a pinch of snuff, and a lad appeared with a bunch of violets from Madame Chalice, the dissentients were cast in shadow, and had no longer courage to doubt.
Madame Chalice had been merely whimsical in sending these violets, which her gardener had brought her that very morning.
“It will help along the pretty farce,” she had said to herself; and then she sat her down to read Napoleon’s letters to Josephine, and to wonder that a woman could have been faithless and vile with such a man. Her blood raced indignantly in her veins as she thought of it. She admired intellect, supremacy, the gifts of temperament, deeds of war and adventure beyond all. As yet her brain was stronger than her feelings; there had been no breakers of emotion in her life. A wife, she had no child; the mother in her was spent upon her husband, whose devotion, honour, name, and goodness were dear to her. Yet—yet she had a world of her own; and reading Napoleon’s impassioned letters to his wife, written with how great homage! in the flow of the tide washing to famous battle-fields, an exultation of ambition inspired her, and the genius of her distinguished ancestors set her heart beating hard. Presently, her face alive with feeling, a furnace in her eyes, she repeated a paragraph from Napoleon’s letters to Josephine:
The enemy have lost, my dearest, eighteen thousand men, prisoners,killed, and wounded. Wurmzer has nothing left but to throw himselfinto Mantua. I hope soon to be in your arms. I love you todistraction. All is well. Nothing is wanting to your husband’shappiness, save the love of Josephine.
She sprang to her feet. “And she, wife of a hero, was in common intrigue with Hippolyte Charles at the time! She had a conqueror, a splendid adventurer, and coming emperor, for a husband, and she loved him not. I—I could have knelt to him—worshipped him. I”—With a little hysterical, disdainful laugh, as of the soul at itself, she leaned upon the window, looking into the village below, alternately smiling and frowning at the thought of this adventurer down at the Louis Quinze. “Yet, who can tell? Disraeli was half mountebank at the start,” she said. “Napoleon dressed infamously, too, before he was successful.” But again she laughed, as at an absurdity.
During the next few days Valmond was everywhere—kind, liberal, quaint, tireless, at times melancholy; “in the distant perspective of the stage,” as Monsieur De la Riviere remarked mockingly. But a passing member of the legislature met and was conquered by Valmond, and carried on to neighbouring parishes the wondrous tale.
He carried it through Ville Bambord, fifty miles away; and the story of how a Napoleon had come to Pontiac reached the ears of old Sergeant Eustache Lagroin of the Old Guard, who had fought with the Great Emperor at Waterloo, and in his army on twenty other battle-fields. He had been at Fontainebleau when Napoleon bade farewell to the Old Guard, saying: “For twenty years I have ever found you in the path of honour and glory. Adieu, my children! I would I were able to press you all to my heart—but I will at least press your eagle. I go to record the great deeds we have done together.”
When the gossip came to Lagroin, as he sat in his doorway, babbling of Grouchy and Lannes and Davoust, the Little Corporal outflanking them all in his praise, his dim blue eyes flared out from the distant sky of youth and memory, his lips pursed in anger, and he got to his feet, his stick fiercely pounding the ground.
“Tut! tut!” said he. “A lie! a pretty lie! I knew all the Napoleons—Joseph, Lucien, Louis, Jerome, Caroline, Eliza, Pauline—all! I have seen them every one. And their children—pah! Who can deceive me? I will go to Pontiac, I will see to this tomfoolery. I’ll bring the rascal to the drumhead. Does he think there is no one? Pish! I will spit him at the first stroke. Here, here, Manette,” he cried to his grand-daughter; “fetch out my uniform, give it an airing, and see to the buttons. I will show this brag how one of the Old Guard looked at Saint Jean. Quick, Manette, my sabre polish; I’ll clean my musket, and to-morrow I will go to Pontiac. I’ll put the scamp through his facings—but yes! I am eighty, but I have an arm of thirty.” True to his word, the next morning at daybreak he started to walk to Pontiac, accompanied for a mile or so by Manette and a few of the villagers.
“See you, my child,” he said, “I will stay with my niece, Desire Malboir, and her daughter Elise, there in Pontiac. You shall hear how I fetch that vagabond to his potage!”
Valmond had purchased a tolerable white horse through Medallion. After a day’s grooming the beast showed off very well; and he was now seen riding about the parish, dressed after the manner of the First Napoleon, with a cocked hat and a short sword at his side. He rode well, and the silver and pennies he scattered were most fruitful of effect from the martial elevation. He happened to be riding into the village at one end as Sergeant Lagroin entered it at the other, each going towards the Louis Quinze. Valmond knew nothing of Sergeant Lagroin, so that what followed was of the inspiration of the moment. It sprang from his wit, and from his knowledge of Napoleon and the Napoleonic history, a knowledge which had sent Monsieur Garon into tears of joy in his own home, and afterwards off to the Manor House and also to the Seigneury, full of praise of him.
Catching sight of the sergeant, the significance of the thing flashed to his brain, and his course was mapped out on the instant. Sitting very straight, Valmond rode steadily down towards the old soldier. The sergeant had drawn notice as he came up the street, and people came to their doors, and children followed the grey, dust-covered veteran, in his last-century uniform. He came as far as the Louis Quinze, and then, looking on up the road, he saw the white horse, the cocked hat, the white waistcoat, and the long grey coat. He brought his stick down smartly on the ground, drew himself up, squared his shoulders, and said: “Courage, Eustache Lagroin. It is not forty Prussians, but one rogue! Crush him! Down with the pretender!”
So, with a defiant light in his eye, he came on, the old uniform sagging loosely on the shrunken body, which yet was soldier-like from head to foot. Years of camp and discipline and battle and endurance were in the whole bearing of the man. He was no more of Pontiac and this simple life than was Valmond himself.
So they neared each other, the challenger and the challenged, the champion and the invader, and quickly the village emptied itself out to see.
When Valmond came so close that he could observe every detail of the old man’s uniform, he suddenly reined in his horse, drew him back on his haunches with his left hand, and with his right saluted—not the old sergeant, but the coat of the Old Guard, to which his eyes were directed. Mechanically the hand of the sergeant went to his cap, then, starting forward with an angry movement, he seemed as though he would attack Valmond.
Valmond sat very still, his right hand thrust in his bosom, his forehead bent, his eyes calmly, resolutely, yet distantly, looking at the sergeant, who grew suddenly still also, while the people watched and wondered.
As Valmond looked, a soft light passed across his face, relieving its theatrical firmness, the half-contemptuous curl of his lip. He knew well enough that this event would make or unmake him in Pontiac. He became also aware that a carriage had driven up among the villagers, and had stopped; and though he did not look directly, he felt that it was Madame Chalice. This soft look on his face was not all assumed; for the ancient uniform of the sergeant touched something in him, the true comedian, or the true Napoleon, and it seemed as if he might dismount and take the old soldier in his arms.
He set his horse on a little, and paused again, with not more than fifteen feet between them. The sergeant’s brain was going round like a top. It was not he that challenged after all.
“Soldier of the Old Guard,” cried Valmond, in a clear, ringing voice, “how far is it to Friedland?”
Like a machine the veteran’s hand again went up to his cap, and he answered:
“To Friedland—the width of a ditch!”
His voice shook as he said it, and the world to him was all a muddle then; for Napoleon the Great had asked a private this question after that battle on the Alle, when Berningsen, the Russian, threw away an army to the master strategist.
The private had answered the question in the words of Sergeant Lagroin. It was a saying long afterwards among the Old Guard, though it may not be found in the usual histories of that time, where every battalion, almost every company, had a watchword, which passed to make room for others, as victory followed victory.
“Soldier of the Old Guard,” said Valmond again, “how came you by those scars upon your forehead?”
“I was a drummer at Auerstadt, a corporal at Austerlitz, a sergeant at Waterloo,” rolled back the reply, in a high, quavering voice, as memories of great events blew in upon the ancient fires of his spirit.
“Ah!” answered Valmond, nodding eagerly; “with Davoust at Auerstadt—thirty against sixty thousand men. At eight o’clock, all fog and mist, as you marched up the defile towards the Sonnenberg hills, the brave Gudin and his division feeling their way to Blucher. Comrade, how still you stepped, your bayonet thrust out before you, clearing the mists, your eyes straining, your teeth set, ready to thrust. All at once a quick-moving mass sprang out of the haze, and upon you, with hardly a sound of warning; and an army of hussars launched themselves at your bayonets! You bent that wall back like a piece of steel, and broke it. Comrade, that was the beginning, in the mist of morning. Tell me how you fared in the light of evening, at the end of that bloody day.”
The old soldier was trembling. There was no sign, no movement, from the crowd. Across the fields came the sharpening of a scythe, the cry of the grasshoppers, and the sound of a mill-wheel arose near by. In the mill itself, far up in a deep dormer window, sat Parpon with his black cat, looking down upon the scene with a grim smiling.
The sergeant saw that mist fronting Sonnenberg rise up, and show ten thousand splendid cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, with a king and a prince to lead them down upon those malleable but unmoving squares of French infantry. He saw himself drumming the Prussians back and his Frenchmen on.
“Beautiful God!” he cried proudly, “that was a day! And every man of the Third Corps that time lift up the lid of hell and drop a Prussian in. I stand beside Davoust once, and ping! come a bullet, and take off his chapeau. It fell upon my drum. I stoop and pick it up and hand it to him, but I keep drumming with one hand all the time. ‘Comrade,’ say I, ‘the army thanks you for your courtesy.’ ‘Brother,’ he say, ‘twas to your drum,’ and his eye flash out where Gudin carved his way through those pigs of Prussians. ‘I’d take my head off to keep your saddle filled, comrade,’ say I. Ping! come a bullet and catch me in the calf. ‘You hold your head too high, brother,’ the general say, and he smile. ‘I’ll hold it higher,’ answer I, and I snatch at a soldier. ‘Up with me on your shoulder, big comrade,’ I say, and he lift me up. I make my sticks sing on the leather. ‘You shall take off your hat to the Little Corporal to-morrow, if you’ve still your head, brother’—speak Davoust like that, and then he ride away like the devil to Morand’s guns. Ha, ha, ha!” The sergeant’s face was blazing with a white glare, for he was very pale, and seemed unconscious of all save the scene in his mind’s eye. “Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed again. “Beautiful God, how did Davoust bring us on up to Sonnenberg! And next day I saw the Little Corporal. ‘Drummer,’ say he, ‘no head’s too high for my Guard. Come you, comrade, your general gives you to me. Come, Corporal Lagroin,’ he call; and I come. ‘But, first,’ he say, ‘up on the shoulder of your big soldier again, and play.’ ‘What shall I play, sire?’ I ask. ‘Play ten thousand heroes to Walhalla,’ he answer. I play, and I think of my brother Jacques, who went fighting to heaven the day before. Beautiful God! that was a day at Auerstadt.”
“Soldier,” said Valmond, waving his hand, “step on. There is a drum at Louis Quinze. Let us go together, comrade.”
The old sergeant was in a dream. He wheeled, the crowd made way for him, and at the neck of the white horse he came on with Valmond. As they passed the carriage of Madame Chalice, Valmond made no sign. They stopped in front of the hotel, and Valmond, motioning to the garcon, gave him an order. The old sergeant stood silent, his eyes full fixed upon Valmond. In a moment the boy came out with the drum. Valmond took it, and, holding it in his hands, said softly: “Soldier of the Old Guard, here is a drum of France.” Without a word the old man took the drum, his fingers trembling as he fastened it to his belt. When the sticks were in his hand, all trembling ceased, and his hands became steady. He was living in the past entirely.
“Soldier,” said Valmond in a loud voice, “remember Austerlitz. The Heights of Pratzen are before you. Play up the feet of the army.”
For an instant the old man did not move, and then a sullen sort of look came over his face. He was not a drummer at Austerlitz, and for the instant he did not remember the tune the drummers played.
“Soldier,” said Valmond softly, “with ‘the Little Sword that Danced’ play up the feet of the army.”
A light broke over the old man’s face. The swift look he cast on Valmond had no distrust now. Instantly his hand went to his cap.
“My General!” he said, and stepped in front of the white horse. There was a moment’s pause, and then the sergeant’s arms were raised, and down came the sticks with a rolling rattle on the leather. They sent a shiver of feeling through the village, and turned the meek white horse into a charger of war. No man laughed at the drama performed in Pontiac that day, not even the little coterie who were present, not even Monsieur De la Riviere, whose brow was black with hatred, for he had watched ‘the eyes of Madame Chalice fill with tears at the old sergeant’s tale of Auerstadt, had noticed her admiring glance, “at this damned comedian,” as he now called Valmond. When he came to her carriage, she said, with oblique suggestion:
“What do you think of it?”
“Impostor! fakir!” was his sulky reply. “Nothing more.”
“If fakirs and impostors are so convincing, dear monsieur, why be yourself longer? Listen!” she added. Valmond had spoken down at the aged drummer, whose arms were young again, as once more he marched on Pratzen. Suddenly from the sergeant’s lips there broke, in a high, shaking voice, to the rattle of the drum:
“Conscrits, au pas;Ne pleurez pas;Ne pleurez pas;Marchez au pas,Au pas, au pas, au pas, au pas!”
They had not gone twenty yards before fifty men and boys, caught in the inflammable moment, sprang out from the crowd, fell involuntarily into rough marching order, and joined in the inspiring refrain:
“Marchez au pas,Au pas, au pas, au pas, au pas!”
The old man in front was charged anew. All at once, at a word from Valmond, he broke into the Marseillaise, with his voice and with his drum. To these Frenchmen of an age before the Revolution, the Marseillaise had only been a song. Now in their ignorant breasts there waked the spirit of France, and from their throats there burst out, with a half-delirious ecstasy:
“Allons, enfants de la patrie,Le jour de gloire est arrive.”
As they neared the Louis Quinze, a dozen men, just arrived in the village, returned from river-driving, carried away by the chant, tumultuously joined in the procession, and so came on in a fever of vague patriotism. A false note in the proceedings, a mismove on the part of Valmond, would easily have made the thing ridiculous; but even to Madame Chalice, with her keen artistic sense, it had a pathetic sort of dignity, by virtue of its rude earnestness, its raw sincerity. She involuntarily thought of the great Napoleon and his toy kingdom of Elba, of Garibaldi and his handful of patriots. There were depths here, and she knew it.
“Even the pantaloon may have a soul,” she said; “or a king may have a heart.”
In front of the Louis Quinze, Valmond waved his hand for a halt, and the ancient drummer wheeled and faced him, fronting the crowd. Valmond was pale, and his eyes burned like restless ghosts. Surely the Cupid bow of the thin Napoleonic lips was there, the distant yet piercing look. He waved his hand again, and the crowd were silent.
“My children,” said he, “we have begun well. Once more among you the antique spirit lives. From you may come the quickening of our beloved country; for she is yours, though here under the flag of our ancient and amiable enemy you wait the hour of your return to her. In you there is nothing mean or dull; you are true Frenchmen. My love is with you. And you and I, true to each other, may come into our own again—over there!”
He pointed to the East.
“Through you and me may France be born again; and in the villages and fields and houses of Normandy and Brittany you may, as did your ancestors, live in peace, and bring your bones to rest in that blessed and honourable ground. My children, my heart is full. Let us move on together. Napoleon from St. Helena calls to you, Napoleon in Pontiac calls to you! Will you come?”
Reckless cheering followed; many were carried away into foolish tears, and Valmond sat still and let them kiss his hand, while pitchers of wine went round.
“Where is our fakir now, dear monsieur?” said Madame Chalice to De la Riviere once again.
Valmond got silence with a gesture. He opened his waistcoat, took from his bosom an order fastened to a little bar of gold, and held it in his hand.
“Drummer,” he said, in a clear, full tone, “call the army to attention.”
The old man set their blood tingling with the impish sticks.
“I advance Sergeant Lagroin, of the Old Guard of glorious memory, to the rank of Captain in my Household Troops, and I command you to obey him as such.”
His look bent upon the crowd, as Napoleon’s might have done on the Third Corps.
“Drummer, call the army to attention,” fell the words.
And again like a small whirlwind of hailstones the sticks shook on the drum.
“I advance Captain Lagroin to the rank of Colonel in my Household Troops, and I command you to obey him as such.”
And once more: “Drummer, call the army to attention.”
The sticks swung down, but somehow they faltered, for the drummer was shaking now.
“I advance Colonel Lagroin to the rank of General in my Household Troops, and I command you to obey him as such.”
Then he beckoned, and the old man drew near. Stooping, he pinned the order upon his breast. When the sergeant saw what it was, he turned pale, trembled, and the drumsticks fell from his hand. His eyes shone like sun on wet glass, then tears sprang from them upon his face. He caught Valmond’s hand and kissed it, and cried, oblivious of them all:
“Ah, sire, sire! It is true. It is true. I know that ribbon, and I know you are a Napoleon. Sire, I love you, and I will die for you!”
For the first time that day a touch of the fantastic came into Valmond’s manner.
“General,” he said, “the centuries look down on us as they looked down on him, your sire—and mine!”
He doffed his hat, and the hats of all likewise came off in a strange quiet. A cheer followed, and Valmond motioned for wine to go round freely. Then he got off his horse, and, taking the weeping old man by the arm, himself loosening the drum from his belt, they passed into the hotel.
“A cheerful bit of foolery and treason,” said Monsieur De la Riviere to Madame Chalice.
“My dear Seigneur, if you only had more humour and less patriotism!” she answered. “Treason may have its virtues. It certainly is interesting, which, in your present gloomy state, you are not.”
“I wonder, madame, that you can countenance this imposture,” he broke out.
“Excellent and superior monsieur, I wonder sometimes that I can countenance you. Breakfast with me on Sunday, and perhaps I will tell you why—at twelve o’clock.”
She drove on, but, meeting the Cure, stopped her carriage.
“Why so grave, my dear Cure?” she asked, holding out her hand.
He fingered the gold cross upon his breast—she had given it to him two years before.
“I am going to counsel him—Monsieur Valmond,” he said. Then, with a sigh: “He sent me two hundred dollars for the altar to-day, and fifty dollars to buy new cassocks for myself.”
“Come in the morning and tell me what he says,” she answered; “and bring our dear avocat.”
As she looked from her window an hour later, she saw bonfires burning, and up from the village came the old song, that had prefaced a drama in Pontiac.
But Elise Malboir had a keener interest that night, for Valmond and Parpon brought her uncle “General Lagroin,” in honour to her mother’s cottage; and she sat and listened dreamily, as Valmond and the old man talked of great things to be done.
Prince or plebeian, Valmond played his part with equal aplomb at the simple home of Elise Malboir and at the Manoir Hilaire, where Madame Chalice received him. His dress had nothing of the bizarre on this occasion. He was in black-long coat, silk stockings, the collar of his waistcoat faced with white, his neckerchief white and full, his enamelled shoes adorned with silver buckles. His present repose and decorum contrasted strangely with the fanciful display at his first introduction. Madame Chalice approved instantly, for though the costume was, in itself, an affectation, previous to the time by a generation, it was in the picture, was sedately refined. She welcomed him in the salon where many another distinguished man had been entertained—from Frontenac, and Vaudreuil, down to Sir Guy Carleton. The Manor had belonged to her husband’s people seventy-five years before, and though, as a banker in New York, Monsieur Chalice had become an American of the Americans, at her request he had bought back from a kinsman the old place, unchanged, furniture and all. Bringing the antique plate, china, and bric-a-brac, made in France when Henri Quatre was king, she fared away to Quebec, set the rude mansion in order, and was happy for a whole summer, as was her husband, the best of fishermen and sportsmen. The Manor House stood on a knoll, behind which, steppe on steppe, climbed the hills, till they ended in Dalgrothe Mountain. Beyond the mountain were unexplored regions, hill and valley floating into hill and valley, lost in a miasmic haze, ruddy, silent, untenanted, save, mayhap, by the strange people known as the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills.
The house had been built in the seventeenth century, and the walls were very thick, to keep out both cold and attack. Beneath the high-pointed roof were big dormer windows, and huge chimneys flanked each side of the house. The great roof gave a sense of crouching or hovering, for warmth or in menace. As Valmond entered the garden, Madame Chalice was leaning over the lower half of the entrance door, which opened latitudinally, and was hung on large iron hinges of quaint design, made by some seventeenth-century forgeron. Behind her deepened hospitably the spacious hall, studded and heavy beamed, with its unpainted pine ceiling toned to a good brown by smoke and time. Caribou and moose antlers hung along the wall, with arquebuses, powder-horns, big shot-bags, swords, and even pieces of armour, such as Cartier brought with him from St. Malo.
Madame Chalice looked out of this ancient avenue, a contrast, yet a harmony; for, though her dress was modern, her person had a rare touch of the archaic, and fitted into the picture like a piece of beautiful porcelain, coloured long before the art of making fadeless colours was lost.
There was an amused, meditative smiling at her lips, a kind of wonder, the tender flush of a new experience. She turned, and, stepping softly into the salon, seated herself near the immense chimney, in a heavily carved chair, her feet lost in rich furs on the polished floor. A quaint table at her hand was dotted with rare old books and miniatures, and behind her ticked an ancient clock in a tall mahogany case.
Valmond came forward, hat in hand, and raised to his lips the fingers she gave him. He did it with the vagueness of one in a dream, she thought, and she neither understood nor relished his uncomplimentary abstraction; so she straightway determined to give him some troublesome moments.
“I have waited to drink my coffee with you,” she said, motioning him to a seat; “and you may smoke a cigarette, if you wish.”
Her eyes wandered over his costume with critical satisfaction.
He waved his hand slightly, declining the permission, and looked at her with an intent seriousness, which took no account of the immediate charm of her presence.
“I’d like to ask you a question,” he said, without preamble. She was amused, interested. Here was an unusual man, who ignored the conventional preliminary nothings, beating down the grass before the play, as it were.
“I was never good at catechism,” she answered. “But I will be as hospitable as I can.”
“I’ve felt,” he said, “that you can—can see through things; that you can balance them, that you get at all sides, and—”
She had been reading Napoleon’s letters this very afternoon.
“Full squared?” she interrupted quizzically.
“As the Great Emperor said,” he answered. “A woman sees farther than a man, and if she has judgment as well, she is the best prophet in the world.”
“It sounds distinctly like a compliment,” she answered. “You are trying to break that square!”
She was mystified; he was different from any man she had ever entertained. She was not half sure she liked it. Yet, if he were in very truth a prince—she thought of his debut in flowered waistcoat, panama hat, and enamelled boots!—she should take this confidence as a compliment; if he were a barber, she could not resent it; she could not waste wit or time; she could not even, in extremity, call the servant to show the barber out; and in any case she was too comfortably interested to worry herself with speculation.
He was very much in earnest. “I want to ask you,” he said, “what is the thing most needed to make a great idea succeed.”
“I have never had a great idea,” she replied.
He looked at her eagerly, with youthful, questioning eyes.
“How simple, and yet how astute he is!” she thought, remembering the event of yesterday.
“I thought you had—I was sure you had,” he said in a troubled sort of way. He did not see that she was eluding him.
“I mean, I never had a fixed and definite idea that I proceeded to apply, as you have done,” she explained tentatively. “But—well, I suppose that the first requisite for success is absolute belief in the idea; that it be part of one’s life; to suffer for, to fight for, to die for, if need be—though that sounds like a handbook of moral mottoes, doesn’t it?”
“That’s it, that’s it,” he said. “The thing must be in your bones—hein?”
“Also in—your blood—hein?” she rejoined slowly and meaningly, looking over the top of her coffee-cup at him. Somehow again the plebeian quality in that hein grated on her, and she could not resist the retort.
“What!” said he confusedly, plunging into another pitfall. She had challenged him, and he knew it. “Nothing what-ever,” she answered, with an urbanity that defied the suggestion of malice. Yet, now that she remembered, she had sweetly challenged one of a royal house for the like lapse into the vulgar tongue. A man should not be beheaded because of a what. So she continued more seriously: “The idea must be himself, all of him, born with him, the rightful output of his own nature, the thing he must inevitably do, or waste his life.”
She looked him honestly in the eyes. She had spoken with the soft irony of truth, the blind tyranny of the just. She had meant to test him here and there by throwing little darts of satire, and yet he made her serious and candid in spite of herself. He was of kin to her in some part of his nature. He did not concern her as a man of personal or social possibilities—merely as an active originality. Leaning back languidly, she was eyeing him closely from under drooping lids, smiling, too, in an unimportant sort of way, as if what she had said was a trifle.
Consummate liar and comedian, or true man and no pretender, his eyes did not falter. They were absorbed, as if in eager study of a theme.
“Yes, yes, that’s it; and if he has it, what next?” said he meaningly.
“Well, then, opportunity, joined to coolness, knowledge of men, power of combination, strategy, and”—she paused, and a purely feminine curiosity impelled her to add suggestively—“and a woman.”
He nodded. “And a woman,” he repeated after her musingly, and not turning it to account cavalierly, as he might have done. He was taking himself with a simple seriousness that appealed to her.
“You may put strategy out of the definition, leaving in the woman,” she continued ironically.
He felt the point, and her demure dart struck home. But he saw what an ally she might make. Tremendous possibilities moved before him. His heart beat faster than it did yesterday when the old sergeant faced him. Here was beauty—he admired that; power—he wished for that. What might he not accomplish, no matter how wild his move, with this wonderful creature as his friend, his ally, his——He paused, for this house had a master as well as a mistress.
“We will leave in the woman,” he said quietly, yet with a sort of trouble in his face.
“In your idea?” was the negligent question.
“Yes.”
“Where is the woman?” insinuated the soft, bewildering voice.
“Here!” he answered emotionally, and he believed it was the truth. She stood looking meditatively out of the window, not at him.
“In Pontiac?” she asked presently, turning with a child-like surprise. “Ah, yes, yes! I know—one of the people; suitable for Pontiac; but is it wise? She is pretty—but is it wise?”
She was adroitly suggesting Elise Malboir, whose little romance she had discovered.
“She is the prettiest and wisest lady I ever knew, or ever hoped to know,” he said earnestly, laying his hand upon his heart.
“How far will your idea take you?” she asked evasively, her small fingers tightening a gold hair-pin. “To Paris—to the Tuileries!” he answered, rising to his feet.
“And you start—from Pontiac?”
“What difference, Pontiac or Cannes, like the Great Master after Elba,” he said. “The principle is the same.”
“The money?”
“It will come,” he answered. “I have friends—and hopes.”
She almost laughed. She was suddenly struck by the grotesqueness of the situation. But she saw how she had hurt him, and she said instantly:
“Of course, with those one may go far. Sit down and tell me all your plans.”
He was about to comply, when, glancing out of the window, she saw the old sergeant, now “General Lagroin,” and Parpon hastening up the walk. Parpon ambled comfortably beside the old man, who seemed ten years younger than he had done the day before.
“Your army and cabinet, monseigneur!” she said with a pretty, mocking gesture of salutation.
He glanced at her reprovingly. “My General and my Minister; as brave a soldier and as able a counsellor as ever prince had. Madame,” he added, “they only are farceurs who do not dare, and have not wisdom. My General has scars from Auerstadt, Austerlitz, and Waterloo; my Minister is feared—in Pontiac. Was he not the trusted friend of the Grand Seigneur, as he was called here, the father of your Monseiur De la Riviere? Has he yet erred in advising me? Have we yet failed? Madame,” he added, a little rhetorically, “as we have begun, so will we end, true to our principles, and—”
“And gentlemen of the king,” she said provokingly, urging him on.
“Pardon, gentlemen of the Empire, madame, as time and our lives will prove.... Madame, I thank you for your violets of Sunday last.”
She admired the acumen that had seized the perfect opportunity to thank her for the violets, the badge of the Great Emperor.
“My hives shall not be empty of bees—or honey,” she said, alluding to the imperial bees, and she touched his arm in a pretty, gracious fashion.
“Madame—ah, madame!” he replied, and his eyes grew moist.
She bade the servant admit Lagroin and Parpon. They bowed profoundly, first to Valmond, and afterwards to Madame Chalice. She saw the point, and it amused her. She read in the old man’s eye the soldier’s contempt for women, together with his new-born reverence and love for Valmond. Lagroin was still dressed in the uniform of the Old Guard, and wore on his breast the sacred ribbon which Valmond had given him the day before.
“Well, General?” said Valmond.
“Sire,” said the old man, “they mock us in the streets. Come to the window, sire.”
The “sire,” fell on the ears of Madame Chalice like a mot in a play; but Valmond, living up to his part, was grave and solicitous. He walked to the window, and the old man said:
“Sire, do you not hear a drum?”
A faint rat-tat came up the road. Valmond bowed. “Sire,” the old man continued, “I would not act till I had your orders.”
“Whence comes the mockery?” Valmond asked quietly.
The other shook his head. “Sire, I do not know. But I remember of such a thing happening to the Emperor. It was in the garden of the Tuileries, and twenty-four battalions of the Old Guard filed past our great chief. Some fool sent out a gamin dressed in regimentals in front of one of the bands, and then—”
“Enough, General,” said Valmond; “I understand. I will go down into the village—eh, monsieur?” he added, turning to Parpon with impressive consideration.
“Sire, there is one behind these mockers,” answered the little man in a low voice.
Valmond turned towards Madame Chalice. “I know my enemy, madame,” he said.
“Your enemy is not here,” she rejoined kindly.
He stooped over her hand, and bowed Lagroin and Parpon to the door.
“Madame,” he said, “I thank you. Will you accept a souvenir of him whom we both love, martyr and friend of France?”
He drew from his breast a small painting of Napoleon, on ivory, and handed it to her.
“It was the work of David,” he continued. “You will find it well authenticated. Look upon the back of it.”
She looked, and her heart beat a little faster. “This was done when he was alive?” she said.
“For the King of Rome,” he answered. “Adieu, madame. Again I thank you, for our cause as for myself.”
He turned away. She let him get as far as the door. “Wait, wait!” she said suddenly, a warm light in her face, for her imagination had been touched. “Tell me, tell me the truth. Who are you? Are you really a Napoleon? I can be a constant ally, but, I charge you, speak the truth to me. Are you—” She stopped abruptly. “No, no; do not tell me,” she added quickly. “If you are not, you will be your own executioner. I will ask for no further proof than did Sergeant Lagroin. It is in a small way yet, but you are playing a terrible game. Do you realise what may happen?”
“In the hour that you ask a last proof I will give it,” he said almost fiercely. “I go now to meet an enemy.”
“If I should change that enemy into a friend—” she hinted.
“Then I should have no need of stratagem or force.”
“Force?” she asked suggestively. The drollery of it set her smiling.
“In a week I shall have five hundred men.”
“Dreamer!” she thought, and shook her head dubiously; but, glancing again at the ivory portrait, her mood changed.
“Au revoir,” she said. “Come and tell me about the mockers. Success go with you—sire.”
Yet she did not know whether she thought him sire or sinner, gentleman or comedian, as she watched him go down the hill with Lagroin and Parpon. But she had the portrait. How did he get it? No matter, it was hers now.
Curious to know more of the episode in the village below, she ordered her carriage, and came driving slowly past the Louis Quinze at an exciting moment. A crowd had gathered, and boys, and even women, were laughing and singing in ridicule snatches of, “Vive Napoleon!” For, in derision of yesterday’s event, a small boy, tricked out with a paper cocked-hat and incongruous regimentals, with a hobby-horse between his legs, was marching up and down, preceded by another lad, who played a toy drum in derision of Lagroin. The children had been well rehearsed, for even as Valmond arrived upon the scene, Lagroin and Parpon on either side of him, the mock Valmond was bidding the drummer: “Play up the feet of the army!”
The crowd parted on either side, silenced and awed by the look of potential purpose in the face of this yesterday’s hero. The old sergeant’s glance was full of fury, Parpon’s of a devilish sort of glee.
Valmond approached the lads.
“My children,” he said kindly, “you have not learned your lesson well enough. You shall be taught.” He took the paper caps from their heads. “I will give you better caps than these.” He took the hobby-horse, the drum, and the tin swords. “I will give you better things than these.” He put the caps on the ground, added the toys to the heap, and Parpon, stooping, lighted the paper. Scattering money among the crowd, and giving some silver to the lads, Valmond stood looking at the bonfire for a moment, and then, pointing to it dramatically, said:
“My friends, my brothers, Frenchmen, we will light larger fires than these. Your young Seigneur sought to do me honour this afternoon. I thank him, and he shall have proof of my affection in due time. And now our good landlord’s wine is free to you, for one goblet each. My children,” he added, turning to the little mockers, “come to me to-morrow and I will show you how to be soldiers. My General shall teach you what to do, and I will teach you what to say.”
Almost instantly there arose the old admiring cries of, “Vive Napoleon!” and he knew that he had regained his ground. Amid the pleasant tumult the three entered the hotel together, like people in a play.
As they were going up the stairs, Parpon whispered to the old soldier, who laid his hand fiercely upon the fine sword at his side, given him that morning by Valmond; for, looking down, Lagroin saw the young Seigneur maliciously laughing at them, as if in delight at the mischief he had caused.
That night, at nine o’clock, the old sergeant went to the Seigneury, knocked, and was admitted to a room where were seated the young Seigneur, Medallion, and the avocat.
“Well, General,” said De la Riviere, rising with great formality, “what may I do to serve you? Will you join our party?” He motioned to a chair.
The old man’s lips were set and stern, and he vouchsafed no reply to the hospitable request.
“Monsieur,” he said, “to-day you threw dirt at my great master. He is of royal blood, and he may not fight you. But I, monsieur, his General, demand satisfaction—swords or pistols!”
De la Riviere sat down, leaned back in his chair, and laughed. Without a word the old man stepped forward, and struck him across the mouth with his red cotton handkerchief.
“Then take that, monsieur,” said he, “from one who fought for the First Napoleon, and will fight for this Napoleon against the tongue of slander and the acts of fools. I killed two Prussians once for saying that the Great Emperor’s shirt stuck out below his waistcoat. You’ll find me at the Louis Quinze,” he added, before De la Riviere, choking with wrath, could do more than get to his feet; and, wheeling, he left the room.
The young Seigneur would have followed him, but the avocat laid a restraining hand upon his arm, and Medallion said: “Dear Seigneur, see, you can’t fight him. The parish would only laugh.”
De la Riviere took the advice, and on Sunday, over the coffee, unburdened the tale to Madame Chalice.
Contrary to his expectations, she laughed a great deal, then soothed his wounded feelings and advised him as Medallion had done. And because Valmond commanded the old sergeant to silence, the matter ended for the moment. But it would have its hour yet, and Valmond knew this as well as did the young Seigneur.